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Architecture photographer Wayne Thom lived at the Bonaventure hotel for a week in 1977 as preparation for taking one of his most iconic images. To shoot the sculptural elegance of John Portman’s building, Thom woke at 4 a.m., positioned himself on the offramp of the 110 Freeway and readied to catch the sunrise. In the resulting photograph, the hotel’s cylindrical forms rise Oz-like from downtown Los Angeles, the curved facades reflecting the colors of dawn.
“I light the building with sun behind it, which illuminates the clouds,” Thom said when asked how to capture the dazzle of mirror glass. Retired and living with his wife, Aesook Jee, in the San Gabriel Valley community of Rowland Heights, 87-year-old Thom still approaches his craft with well-honed technique and poetry in equal measure. “You are photographing the reflection, not the building. The building is just a frame for the reflection of the sky.”
New Architecture Books to Read
Get a dose of architectural inspiration with these new and upcoming publications.
Aesthetica‘s top titles span Australia, China and more, from the photography of Late Modernism to buildings of the future.
Todayâs creative architects arenât just designing buildings, theyâre working across various disciplines to grapple with ecological responsibility. Radical Architecture of the Future maps out a bold route forward. âYou could also call it âradical ways of thinking about architectureââ, critic and curator Beatrice Galilee notes. She believes âarchitectureâ incorporates everything from game design to community activism, inhabitants including insects and data. âItâs provocative to think that all of these myriad disciplines have architectural agency, but they all represent different ways of working with space.â